Hair greased and pulled back, face calm, eyes a little cold, he sits in his beat-up Oldsmobile. Wrapped around his index finger is a white string, holding on to a key, dangling, occasionally reflecting the lights from the street outside. Between him and the pavement is just the encasement of his car, which is still running. He twirls the key around his finger a little and then let it dangle in the slacking momentum of the movement. He notices how it undulates for a good six times before it comes to a stop. He lets the key fall gently in his palm before closing it with his hand, and then he shuts off the engine.
Suddenly, it becomes very quiet. It's almost 3 in the morning, based on the last time he took a look at the watch. There hasn't been a car in a while, or not that he noticed. There is no distant sound of cars rolling their tires on the wet pavement. On the windshield are many dots of water, which have been increasing in number in the past few minutes.
He looks up to her window, and sees that the light is still on. She is waiting for him, still. She is hoping he would come back up, and start their fight again. It's better to scream and throw things to deliberately miss the person, to do all this is better than to suffer the distance. He understands this desire, this sick desire. He understands the irresistible attraction of continuing the fight. He had been letting the engine run for a good solid hour now, stuck in that quagmire where different forces all wearing a badge of reason pull him in different directions in such perfect equilibrium that in the end he only feels the force of sinking feeling.
She probably hears that the engine is cut off. She never appeared at the window, not even her shadow. Maybe she fell asleep. But if she didn't, she has been listening to him turn on the engine, but that no sound of departure was heard. She must have been paying attention. Just like him, she wants him to leave as much as wants him to open the door. They might not fight tonight. They might be embracing, and succumb to their mutual fatigue and fall asleep together. Then tomorrow morning, they would make love, but then the whole cycle would resume.
It has only been a little more than an hour, but he can clearly smell her, feel her, see her right here, in the encasement that imprisons and protects him from the outside, from the confusion, from her. He opens his right palm again and sees the hard metal warmed by his caressing hand. He imagines for a bit that with the white string tying it to his finger it is like a religious symbol, the Holy Cross, somehow. He has had this key for well over six years, but for most of those six years, he had used it to open a door to so much drama, so much heart-ache, created and received by him. He remembered the first encounter with the key. It was so dramatic like everything else between them. It was presented to him as if it were a trophy, and he received it like a trophy, something he felt he had earned. And nearly every time he pushed that key into her lock, that feeling of triumphant victory simmers a little as the different teeth of the key fitted into the pins of the lock, and the sound made by the interaction of the teeth and pins.
He uses the tip of his thumbnail to feel the teeth of the key, and he looks up.
His heart skips a beat. The light is off in her window. She has stopped waiting.
Maybe she is coming down, he thought.
How optimistic.
He waits.
Nothing.
He can feel the flush on his face. He can feel the anger rising. It's that same feeling before all hell breaks loose, and they start fighting. Except that this time, he is alone, in his car. No one to argue with. He wants to throw the key out, his left arm already touching the window turn handle. He wants to punch the steering wheel. He wants to scream in the night, within his encasement that would not be able to contain his anguish. But instead he sighs. He releases the key with the string from his finger and puts it in its usual place, the glove compartment.
He sits a little more in the cold. He hadn't noticed until now, but without the engine on, the cold outside has breached into his little protective space. The windshield is now all wet, and the collision of the raindrops on the windshield is no longer visible as they simply dissolve in the cemetery of their former comrades. He pulls the door handle and opens the door. After stepping out, he closes the door, which produces a sound that echos in the night.
She must have heard that. She must be startled now. Her heart racing for all the mixture of familiar reasons.
He locks the car. He zips up his jacket, looks up one last time at her window, and crosses the street. It is a long walk home, but it would certainly help.
